Cornelis De Jager of the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research and Silvia Duhau of the Departamento de Física, Facultad de Ingenieria, Universidad de Buenos Aires have published a new paper in the Journal of Space Weather and Space Climate titled:

I’m not sure if other bloggers have written about this. If so, here it is again. The paper forecasts solar activity for the current Solar cycle 24, which they expect will peak in May, 2013 with a maximum sunspot number Rmax of 62 ± 12.

More importantly, the authors write (emphasis added):

The subsequent analysis, based on a phase diagram, which is a diagram showing the relation between maximum sunspot numbers and minimum geomagnetic aa index values leads to the conclusion that a new Grand Episode in solar activity has started in 2008.”

A NASA-sponsored researcher at the University of Iowa has developed a way for spacecraft to hunt down hidden magnetic portals in the vicinity of Earth. These portals link the magnetic field of our planet to that of the sun.